What Colours Make Skin Tones?

Try these easy tips for creating lifelike skin tone colors for painting in oil.

The method for mixing lifelike skin tones is the same as mixing colors for any other realistic painting. The goal is to replicate. Clone the colors. Duplicate the colors. Simulate the colors, values, and color temperature that matches what you see in front of you.

What colors make realistic skin tones?

In general, reds, yellows, white, browns, greens, blues, and purples can be combined in various formulas to mix lifelike flesh tones in oil paint. Yes, almost every color of the rainbow. Add Indian yellow which looks rather orange, and you've got a full spectrum of colors on your paint palette.

Monochromatic paintings can be painted with browns and white. Skin tones are often mixed with red, yellow, and white with blues added as necessary.

Pinks add blush in the areas that get coldest first like our nose, cheeks, and fingers.

Greens, blues, and purples can be used in the shadows and added in small amounts to cool the color temperature of flesh tones.

I suggest the following oil paint colors but there are many color combinations that will work. Experiment and find the colors that work for you.

• Cadmium Red & Cadmium Red Light
• Permanent Rose or Alizarin Crimson
• Ventian Red
• Raw Sienna
• Naples Yellow
• Gamblin Reclaimed Earth Series: Iron Oxide, Violet Iron Oxide, & Rust Red
• Terre Verte or Green Earth
• French Ultramarine Blue
• Radiant Blue
• Dioxazine Purple

Seeing Color

Please understand that our brains like to simplify things. Shorten or reduce the time it takes to complete a task. This works well for many areas of life but not for painting.

When painting realistic, we have to rely on careful observation. We have to learn to see subtle variations of color. Painting skin requires muted natural-looking paint colors and subtle color changes.

Relax your gaze and look longer. Looking longer allows you to become aware of the subtle color changes. The longer you look at an object, the more you'll see. You can begin to see shapes within shapes and shadows within shadows. Look longer and you'll begin to see how some pinks look warm and orangish while others tend to look cooler and blue. Choose a warm red like Cadmium Red Light for warm pink hues. Choose Permanent Rose or Alizarin when mixing cool pinks that contain more bluish hues.

Look longer. Paint what you see.

Knowledge of Color

Once you have experience painting, slowly over time, a general knowledge of color develops. What I mean by knowledge is that you just know, you remember, what happens when you mix one paint color with another. You can speculate or guess what combining two colors looks like. When you reach this point, you can look at the tubes of paint in your toolbox and make some educated guesses about color mixing. Add knowledge of color theory and you can get pretty close when mixing colors.

If you learn one thing about color theory, let it be this. Memorize the complementary color pairs. Nothing will be more helpful when mixing paint colors than knowing a colors complement. Complementary colors are essential for mixing natural-looking muted colors.

Mixing Muted Natural-Looking Paint Colors

Nature is full of muted colors. Bright saturated paint colors can make a portrait look garish, gaudy, and unnatural. Many paint colors are bright and highly saturated straight from the tube. Knowing how to mute bright paint colors is essential for painting realistic skin tones. If a skin tone mixture looks a bit too orange, adding blue mutes it to a natural-looking tone. Blue is the complementary color of orange. Tone down bright pink paint colors by adding a small amount of green. Green is the complementary color of reds and pinks.

Subtle Color Changes

Painting lifelike skin tones requires making subtle color changes as you move across the figure. Color changes are made as often as every half inch or so. There are no large flat areas of a single color. Large areas of a solid color will make the figure look flat and lifeless like a cartoon.

Placing Color

Instead of blending colors together on your canvas, consider placing colors next to one another without blending. Make the color changes extremely subtle. Then the eye can flow from color to color without the need for blending.

Crosshatching, Blending, & More

Crosshatching color is another option. Oil paintings should be painted in layers. By crosshatching one color over another one can produce the subtle color changes necessary for realistic skin tones. Blend sparingly in certain areas and less in others for a natural looking painting.

Conclusion:

There are many oil paint color combinations that can used to paint realistic skin tones. Realistic skin tones often require a full spectrum of paint colors. Painting skin tones is similar to painting anything else. Memorize the complementary color pairs. Experiment with color mixing. Observer your subject carefully. Look longer. Learn to paint what you see. I'm rooting for you!

Author: Sonia Reeder-Jones